The Vanished (4 page)

As the boy clambered to his feet, I froze to the spot. Dad walked towards me. He had emerged from a barn to the right that I hadn’t even noticed. Without realising I’d walked towards the barn Ali told me about, as though my feet had led me here on their own.

“Your power has grown,” he said in awe. “I never imagined…” he trailed off. His back was straight and tense. He approached me in the same manner someone would approach a cornered animal. “It’s so good to see you. Minnie––”

“Don’t call me that.” My voice cracked and I cleared my throat.

“She’s really angry, Prof,” the boy said. “And I’d be careful seeing as we’ve already seen her go Hulk.”

My eyes narrowed at the comic book reference. What had my dad been teaching them? Most of that stuff had been banned by the Ministry years ago for belittling genetic mutations.

“Mina, I’m so sorry.” He removed his glasses and wiped them. “I know how hurt you must be. You feel let down by the one person who should have been there for you.”

“You lied to me.”

“Yes, I did.”

“You kept Matthew from me.” My voice cracked again, and despite my best efforts a tear escaped from my eye.

“I know,” he said with a sigh. “I’m so sorry.”

How had I ever thought that this man was warm? Why did I believe he was the one person who would always be there for me? I would never, ever feel like that again.

“The Enforcers took Matthew. I couldn’t stop them.”

Dad’s voice came out in a rasp. “Oh… that’s… poor Matthew… oh, you poor child.” He stepped forward to hold me but I moved away. His arm dropped to his side. “I’m so grateful to him for getting you here.”

“We nearly didn’t make it. If it hadn’t been for Ali we never would. Murder-Troll––”

“Your teacher?” His eyes widened in surprise. “What did she have to do with anything.” Then his face flushed again. “Mina, your hair! What happened to it?”

I sighed and re-told the story of how my teacher Mrs Murgatroyd, or Murder-Troll as we nicknamed her, had obsessed over my relationship with Daniel and Sebastian, although I left out some details, like meeting Sebastian in a field at night, before taking it upon herself to teach me a lesson by cutting away my hair. Then later that night, the same night my dad disappeared, Daniel had gone to Murder-Troll’s house to break in because he was so angry over what she’d done to me, and troubled about losing his adoptive mother, which was when I joined in instead of talking him out of it. The break-in was classed as an act of terrorism, and Murder-Troll had worked with the Ministry to have us arrested, trying to kill us at Sebastian’s farm in the process. It was only Ali’s quick thinking which got us out of Area 14. He’d impersonated an Enforcer to help get me out.

My dad stood shaking his head and groaning as I told him the story whilst two more shapes exited the barn. A wiry looking blonde girl watched me with her head titled to the side and her blue eyes growing bigger and bigger until she looked more like a sad kitten than a human. A small boy, around ten years old, hung back from the rest of us. He had a short crop of straight black hair and pale skin.

“I never would have left,” dad said after a long pause. “I left you with all that… I’m so sorry, Mina.” His face had aged as I told the story, wrinkles seeming to deepen, his eyes glazing with sadness. I’d been brutal in my re-telling, going into detail about the bullets and the fights and Daniel’s wounds. I told it cold. It was my revenge.

“Well you did leave. And that is what happened.”

“I had a good reason.”

“I hoped you would say that. Because I’m very interested to hear it.” My voice sounded strange. It was cold and distant, not like me at all, but I couldn’t help it. I took a deep breath and tried to unclench my hands.

“Hiro, could you come over here please?” Dad said, angling his head towards the small Asian boy.

“You know you don’t have to say it,” Hiro said in a small voice. “I hear it anyway.”

Dad placed a protective arm on his shoulders. “Hiro I would like you to meet my daughter, Mina. She is special too and can do special things with her mind.”

“No kidding,” the scruffy haired boy with the strange sense of smell said, kicking at the grass.

My dad turned to him. “Let it go, Mike.” He sighed and crouched next to Hiro. “Mina can move things without touching them. That’s called telekinesis.”

“I know what it’s called,” Hiro said. He spoke with a frightening maturity for a little boy. “I’ve heard it before.”

I didn’t know what was going on, but I did see my dad gazing lovingly at a child he wasn’t related to. Was this the reason why he left me? To help a boy he didn’t even know? I was his daughter.

Hiro put his hands over his ears. “She’s loud.”

“Mina, you have to try not to think.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, exasperated. “I can’t stop myself thinking.”

“You have to try because Hiro can hear every word you say. He can hear all of our thoughts and it can be very difficult for him.”

As though to prove my dad’s point Hiro added, “Mike is thinking that he could beat you in a fight, Kitty is thinking about your taste and how easy it would be to track you, Professor is thinking about whether you will ever forgive him and you are wondering why he left you to help me.” He paused and looked down at his shoes, squirming under my dad’s arm. “I can’t help that.”

He was just a little boy. I mouth opened in shock as I thought about the burden he must face every day – to have that kind of ability, to hear the thoughts of everyone you meet. “You’re a mind-reader.”

Hiro nodded.

I couldn’t hate him, not anymore. I imagined the kind of life he had lived; the horrible people out there who thought about sick and twisted things. I remembered the dishonest people who lived in the slums of Area 14 and even Mrs Murgatroyd. I shuddered.

“Your dad helped us all,” said Kitty, the girl with blonde hair. “He tracked us down and helped us get out of our Areas. I’d never fit in at school.” She hesitated. “I can taste people. Everyone on this planet leaves a unique taste, and I can track them. I’ve learnt to control it now, to pick out the tastes I want and ignore the others, but it’s been a hard journey. My parents didn’t understand. You’re lucky to have your dad.” With tears in her eyes and her blonde hair flowing in the wind, Kitty backed away and ran into the barn.

“How did you do all this? I don’t understand?” I said to Dad.

“Mina, those people who would come to our house and deliver messages weren’t always from the Resistance. They were people I had employed.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I wanted to find out if there were more people out there like you and what I found was astounding. I found Mike first, a young boy who vomited at unexpected moments, who would tell his parents how they smelled each day – a boy who was beaten for his powers.”

I turned to Mike whose head was low. “They thought I was a freak. They didn’t like it.”

“I had to do something. I used the Resistance to contact the Clans and get him out,” Dad said.

“How long have you been here?” I asked Mike.

“Two years,” he said. “The people here think I’m freakish but no one beats me. Mary looks after me sometimes.”

“Then I found reports of a girl who was more like a cat, who tracked people. They called her Kitty as a taunt. Her parents were more supportive and wanted her to have a normal life, but they refused to leave theirs.” Dad sounded sad. “They wanted her to live on her own. She’s been here for almost a year.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. All this time my dad was some kind of guardian for children with super-powers. He’d been sneaking around protecting these kids and getting them out of their Areas, something which was extremely illegal.

“Why didn’t you tell me all this?”

“Mina, the things I have been doing are hanging offences. If the Ministry found you, I couldn’t risk you knowing anything about it. I couldn’t involve you in any of this.”

“What about the letters from Mum? Were any of them from her?”

“Yes,” he said. “But not all of them.”

“No wonder you never let me read them.”

His eyes dropped from mine. “One day I will, I promise. I’m so sorry for all of these secrets. I just wanted to protect you.”

I didn’t feel protected. I felt alone. “We moved to Area 14 for Daniel.”

“Yes,” he said. His eyes dropped down to his feet. “Daniel and Hiro were the last and the most complex. Daniel is the most damaged from his upbringing and his gift. The visions he gets can be terribly debilitating, and the reports suggested that his mother behaved horribly.”

“She thought he was possessed by the devil,” I mumbled. I thought of him alone and frightened and my heart ached.

“That’s right. And then Angela’s mum took him in when she left. I had to gain his trust before anything else, which correlated with needing to leave Area 10.” He sighed. “But then my sources told me about Hiro.” Dad squeezed the boy’s shoulders. “Mind-reading is something almost impossible for a child to keep a secret. I had to find him before the Ministry did.”

“What about his parents.”

“They didn’t like me,” Hiro said. “They thought I was strange.” He screwed his eyes tight shut and I didn’t ask any more questions. Maybe Kitty was right. Maybe I was the lucky one.

I sucked in air. “This is all a lot to take in.”

“I know, Minnie.”

I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there staring at my dad.

“Would you like to come and watch us train?” Dad broke the silence.

Despite everything, I realised that I did.

Wind whistling through the slats in the barn created an eerie atmosphere. It was long and rectangular with a truss roof and a small upper floor suspended over the far right corner. The floor was still littered with straw, now musty and grey. Half of the floor had been cleared to reveal dusty concrete. There was fresh paint on the inner walls. The barn doors were flung open, creating a space high enough for a truck to fit through if needed.

“Right now, we’re having a tidy-up. Over the last week we’ve made some progress clearing the straw away and painting the walls. We’ve been putting some training equipment together. Mike and I have almost completed a punch-bag filled with straw,” Dad said. “Where would you like to begin, Mina? You can paint with Hiro, sweep with Mike or whittle arrows with Kitty.”

I looked around at the four faces: Mike sniffed and looked away, Kitty’s eyes widened, Hiro looked down at his shoes and my dad smiled a little too wide, overcompensating for his guilt. “I’ll work with Hiro.”

Dad busied himself finding paint brushes and pouring out the correct paint for us. It was a brilliant white. It would certainly brighten the place up for our training sessions. He showed us a rickety ladder and warned us to be careful, which I thought sounded ironic given the week I’d just lived through, and we got to work – in silence.

He was a good worker. At ten years old Hiro picked up the paint brush and spread the paint with enthusiasm. I marvelled at his maturity. He seemed older than me.

“It’s from the thoughts,” he said. He shrugged. “I guess I grew up quicker.”

“When did they start?”

“I don’t remember.” His tiny brow furrowed. “A long time ago.”

“You hear everything? You can’t block it out?”

“No,” he said in a small voice. “But I want to learn.”

Of course he did. I knew how it made you feel to have something inside you that you couldn’t control.

We finished our wall far before the others and Hiro’s gift proved useful when we negotiated the ladder together, him guessing my intentions before I spoke them, plucking the instructions out of my mind. Before long I found myself thinking instead of speaking.

To the right, Hiro. I’ll lift you up to reach that spot above your head. Steady the ladder while I climb…

My thoughts drifted back to the week I spent in the basement of my house at Area 14 while Daniel, Angela and Dad helped me to turn the space into a training area. The memory made me feel warm and pleasant, like the glow of the sun, until I thought of our portraits on the wall of the empty house. I wondered who had taken the house over, whether Mrs Murgatroyd had stripped the place looking for clues. She wouldn’t find any. My dad wasn’t that stupid. Ali was right – I was part of the Vanished. So was Daniel. So was Angela, Sebastian, Hiro, Mike, Kitty. We’d escaped our Areas. We’d done it. That warm feeling in my stomach swelled. It was the connector pulling tighter. I was
meant
to be here.

“I feel it too,” Hiro said.

“You do? What is it?”

“I don’t know, but they feel it.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Kitty and Mike. They feel it towards each other.” He blushed. “But also when I’m around, and I feel it for them.”

“I feel it for Daniel.” I stopped painting. “Wait a minute. Are you saying that we are all connected somehow?”

Hiro blinked. “I don’t know. But last night I got a funny feeling in my tummy. All warm and tight. I think it was when you and Daniel arrived.”

This was something I had never anticipated, the instant connection to Daniel, the way he made me safe and the way I hated to be away from him – what if it wasn’t love? What if it wasn’t attraction? What if it was our genes calling to each other?

“You don’t know that for sure,” Hiro warned.

What if this was all my body playing tricks on me and I wasn’t falling for him? Our relationship hadn’t even started and now I had more doubts, more worries, and more insecurities.

Hiro nudged me and gestured towards Mike and Kitty. They were huddling over a small campfire waiting for the kettle to boil. Mike wrapped his arms around Kitty and squeezed her tight. “Whatever it is it works for them.”

I had to see Daniel.

*

Cam let me through with a smile, telling me I didn’t look quite so “peeky”. I barged my way through groups of soldiers, not really caring about the looks they gave me. I just had to see him. I had to tell him about the others and about what Hiro told me.

“Daniel,” I called out from the end of the ward. I don’t know why, it wasn’t as though he could get up and come to me. “I need to talk to you.”

Angela was sat next to him with a mug in her hand. Ali must have sorted out clothes for her because she looked clean and changed. She wore a purple scarf wrapped around her hair, blue jeans and a white cotton top, long-sleeved like mine. I made my way past a few women panting and sweating in their labour, trying not to look. I was glad Daniel wasn’t in the delivery room.

“He’s tired,” Angela said, standing up as I approached.

“He can speak for himself.” I folded my arms and she copied me.

“Angela, I can talk to Mina if I want to. I’m fine.” He looked better. He was propped up with cushions, wearing clean pyjamas, and there was more colour in his cheeks.

“She doesn’t deserve to speak to you after running out like that,” Angela said with gritted teeth. “You don’t think of anyone but yourself,” she said to me.

“That’s not true and you know it.” I tried to keep my voice gentle. She’d been through so much, watching her mum deteriorate into dementia and harbouring secret feelings for Daniel only then to watch him fall for me. I felt sorry for her.

“Do I?” There were tears in her eyes.

“Angela, don’t. I don’t want things to be like this.” I held out a hand to put on her shoulder, but she swatted it away.

“You knew how I felt…” She began, but the tears took over and she ran out of the ward. The rotund nurse looked across and raised a disapproving eyebrow.

“I should go after her.” I turned to leave, but Daniel reached across and grabbed my arm.

“No,” he said, “I know it’s selfish but Angela can wait. I want to know what you came here to say first.” He flinched from the strain of holding my arm and I relented, moving closer to the hospital bed. My shoes squeaked with every step on the linoleum floor.

“I’ve had the weirdest morning,” I started. “I found my dad and he wasn’t alone.”

Daniel shuffled up in the bed so he could be closer to me. His hair seemed cleaner than a few hours ago. “What do you mean?”

I relayed the story and Daniel listened with thoughtful eyes as I told him about the Freaks. I had to take a deep breath before I told him what Hiro worked out. “That feeling we’ve had since we came here, the one which makes us feel a home. That warm sensation in your stomach, like the one I feel when I’m with you.” My cheeks flushed with heat. “It’s not just you and me. It’s all of us. We all feel it about each other.”

“Oh,” Daniel said. He stared straight ahead at the wall.

“Do you realise that this means?”

“We’re all connected?”

I swallowed. “Yes. But also…” I struggled for words, the heat spreading down my neck. “The way we feel about each other… what if that isn’t? What if it’s because…?”

“…of our genes,” he finished for me. “We’ve either evolved or mutated or been modified to be connected.”

“What you said this morning,” I continued, not looking at him. “Maybe it’s because of who we are and what we can do. Maybe it isn’t… love.” I whispered the last word, somehow afraid of its power.

Daniel exhaled in one long breath as though releasing all of his worries at the same time. Afterwards, he was more collected and turned to smile at me. “Does it matter?”

“Well, yeah. I guess,” I said. “I want you to feel like that because of me, not because you have to. Don’t you?”

“I still don’t know how you feel,” Daniel replied.

I was silent.

Daniel took my hand. “We’ll figure it out, Mina. We’re here now; we’ve found your dad and even found other people like us. We’ve got all the time in the world to sort this out. I promise.” He squeezed, and I was more reassured than ever.

“You’re right,” I said, smiling. “And you need to concentrate on getting better. That’s the most important thing. When you’re better I’ll take you to see them, and we’ll talk about it then.” It was a relief to have at least some sort of a plan.

“Wait a minute,” Daniel said. “What did you say the other powers were?”

“Well, Hiro reads minds, he’s a telepath. Mike smells emotions – I don’t know what you call that.” I shuddered, thinking about the horrible things you can smell on people. “And Kitty tastes people.”

Daniel looked thoughtful. “Mike is smell. Kitty is taste. Hiro is hearing. That makes me sight and you––”

“––touch.” I finished. “Our powers are based on the five senses.”